


It’s Been Too Long

by magykal_fangirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And they’re both ace so I don’t have to imagine them having sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluffy but also angsty, M/M, also Teddy is a demi boy but it’s not mentioned, although you totally can, and al is trans, james is pan, so is James tbh, teddy is a gay mess, victoire is a good bean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 08:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15926534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magykal_fangirl/pseuds/magykal_fangirl
Summary: Teddy’s been gone for two years but he’s back home now, at the Weasleys’, and something seems different. James is gone now and nobody will tell Teddy where he is.akaHopeless gay boys and misunderstandings. Also pining but they don’t know it.





	It’s Been Too Long

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter. If you think my work is good enough to envy jk Rowling pls comment and leave kudos!

“I’m home!” shouted Teddy.

He smiled as footsteps grew louder and more cluttered, more and more Weasleys hearing of his arrival. He set down his bags and awaited the first of many hugs. The biggest and greatest hug came from the great Molly Weasley herself of course and Teddy thanked Merlin he’d been blessed to be a great hugger — he never would’ve survived this family had he not. The next hugs came from the youngest of the cousins; Molly and Gwen squeezed his legs so tightly he thought they’d go numb. The Potter cousins were still on holiday in France, he’d heard, and the twins were with their uncle Charlie in Romania, so the house was way quieter than usual. Teddy hugged the rest of them, saving Victoire for last.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her ear. “I love you.”

It was joking but very true. He loved Victoire more than everyone in the world, just not in the way she’d wanted. She sighed and kissed his cheek. Her lips lingered and memories of years past trickled their way to the front of his mind. “I know.”

Teddy brought his bags upstairs (with the “help” of little Molly) and into his room. He saw the already made bed and the clean floor and wondered how he was ever going to keep it that way. The red walls felt different from the blue they’d been before and it gave the room a whole new aura. The bookcases were organized differently and there were posters of famous wizards he’d never heard of on the walls.

“How long have I been gone?” he whispered, to his room and to himself.

*//*

The days passed like minutes with the Weasleys. Especially when Teddy made a special effort to spend as much time with the cousins as possible. He tried to make each day better than the last and recently he’d discovered that Rose was the best way to do that. Rose was six years younger than him but somehow knew so much more about the world than he did. In three days, they’d participated in a jousting tournament (and won), raced in Tour de France (and gotten kicked out), and apparated to the top of Mount Everest. They’d teamed up with Lily at the bike race and would never have been found out if it wasn’t for the wizard who ran it. While in France, Lily had made a big deal about exchanging phone numbers with Teddy, even giving him James’s and Al’s numbers as well. Apparently he was “closed off from the world” if he only had Molly, Victoire, and Harry’s numbers. He kept opening an iMessage with James then closing it, opening it, closing it, open, close, open, close. He didn’t even know what he would say.

After all that, he decided he’d try to spend at least one day with each cousin, to make up for all the quality time they’d lost when he’d been gone. He hung out with Hugo, Louis, and Dom next, playing quidditch with just chasers and keepers. It brought him back to his Hogwarts days of messing around with Victoire on the quidditch pitch between (and sometimes during) classes. He hadn’t known James that well back then and everything had been better (Teddy said better when he really meant easier).

Molly and Gwen had made him sit with them and play “Story”, which was really just a LARP of a soap opera. Apparently, Gwen had just gotten on the Harpies team and had gotten into an on and off relationship with the captain that was affecting the game. How they knew about relationships was beyond him, but how they knew about the Harpies wasn’t hard to figure out considering their father was Oliver Wood and their aunt was Ginny Potter. 

Occasionally, Teddy had some time to himself and in this time, he mostly stayed in his room or helped Molly with the cooking. It was nice to talk with her about the weird things going on in the wizarding world and in the family. Every once in awhile she’d bring up James, but Teddy would hurriedly change the subject to something less complicated. He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.

Teddy’s room smelled funny. It wasn’t a bad smell, necessarily, it just wasn’t familiar. For instance, whenever he opened his sock drawer, he smelled broom polish. And whenever he had his clothes in the closet too long, they’d end up smelling like rotten eggs. He didn’t question it too much but he had a sneaking suspicion that _something_ had happened in the past two years. No one was spilling.

The Potters came home the third Wednesday of July. The twins came home that Saturday. James was still gone. Teddy felt weird without him there. Even though he’d been gone for two years, coming back had pulled him back into the family and without James he didn’t know how that would function. James had always been there and Teddy didn’t know what to do now that he wasn’t.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> This’ll be longer don’t worry I just haven’t written the next part yet. Totally not procrastinating..... :D


End file.
